"Get out of here, for Christ's sake, will you?" William Forsythe Butler said to Remo. He raised his right hand to Remo's shoulder and pushed. Something on his hand glinted in the sun. It was a ring. A gold ring. A gold ring formed in the links of a small chain.
Hillary Butler had seen that ring before. Just once, when the heavy black hand holding the chloroform pad had lowered over her face.
Hillary Butler screamed.
Remo turned, as silence descended over the entire village. The white girl stood there in the entrance to the hut, her mouth open, her finger slowly raising to point. Remo came to her side.
"Oh, Remo," she said. "You've got him."
"Got him? Oh yeah, right. Obode," Remo said. "He's tied up down there."
"No, no, not Obode. That one," she said, pointing to Butler. "He was the one who took me from my house. He kidnapped me."
"Him?" Remo said, pointing to Butler.
She nodded and shuddered.
"Old Willie?" Remo asked.
"That one," she said pointing.
Suddenly everything had come undone for William Forsythe Butler, but perhaps there was still a chance. He broke through the crowd, pulling the pistol from his holster, running toward Obode. He might yet manage it. Kill Obode, then say he took the girl under Obode's orders.
He raised the gun to fire. Then the gun was gone from his hand, thudding softly, sending up a little puff of dust where it hit the ground and Chiun stood alongside him.
Butler stopped in his tracks,
"You have done evil to the Loni people," Chiun said. "Did you hope someday to be king of this land? To one day enslave not only Hausa but Loni too?" Chiun's voice rose in pitch.
Butler slowly backed away from him. "You have disgraced the Loni people. You are not fit to live."
Butler turned to try to run, but there was no break in the crowd. He turned. Then Chiun turned his back on him and was walking away.
Remo moved out into the clearing.
"It was you, Willie?"
"Yes," Butler hissed, the Loni click in his throat chattering his anger. "I would repay in kind what the whites did to me. What they did to the Loni people."
"Sorry, Willie," Remo said, remembering the girls he had been forced to kill. "You were a good cornerback but you know how it is: you can't argue with a legend."
He moved toward Butler, who drew himself up to his full height. He was bigger than Remo, heavier, probably stronger. The white bastard had never been able to forget for one minute that he had been Willie Butler. All right. So be it. Now he would show him what Willie Butler could do if he had wanted to play the white man's game.
He crouched down and from deep in his throat growled at Remo: "Your ball, honky."
"I'm going to flood your zone with receivers," Remo said. "That always confused you goons."
Remo began trotting toward Butler who went wide-legged into a tackling stance. When Remo was within reach, he sprang, leaving his feet, rolling on his side toward Remo. Remo skipped lightly over him and Butler quickly rolled up onto his feet.
"First and ten," Remo said.
He came back toward Butler who assumed the same stance, but this time as Remo drew near, Butler straightened up, leaped into the air and let fly a kick at Remo's face. Remo caught the heel of the foot in both hands and continued pushing it upward, tumbling Butler back over onto his back.
"Unsportsmanlike conduct, Willie. That'll cost you fifteen yards."
Butler got up again and charged now in a rage at Remo, who dodged away. "Tell me, Willie, what was it you were trying to prove? What'd you need the girls for?"
"How could you know? That accursed family… the Butlers, the Forsythes, the Lippincotts… they bought my family as slaves. I was collecting a debt."
"And you think that poor little girl over there had something to do with it?"
"Blood of blood," Butler grunted, as he wrapped his arms around Remo's waist. "The bad seed has to be uprooted, no matter how big it's grown." He slid off Remo to the ground as Remo skipped away.
"It's people like you, Willie, that give racism a bad name."
Butler had edged around, slowly facing Remo, moving in a circle. He widened the circle gradually until his back was against the line of Lords who were quietly watching this contest, so unlike anything they had ever seen.
Without warning, Butler reached behind him, grabbed a spear from one of the Lord men and jumped back into the squared arena.
"At last, your true colours come out," Remo said. "You're just another dirty player."
Butler moved toward him with the spear, holding it like a javelin, his hand on its middle, its weight poised over his right shoulder, ready to throw.
"Now you tell me something, white man. The legend says a dead man comes with the Master. How are you a dead man?"
"Sorry, Willie, it's true. I died ten years ago. Now you can worry about the legend."
"Well, dying didn't seem to take. So I think you ought to try it again."
Butler was only six feet from Remo now and he reared back with the spear and let it fly. Its point flew straight at Remo's chest and Remo collapsed backwards out of its way and as the spear passed over his head, Remo's hand flashed out and cracked the center of the shaft. The spear snapped in two, both halves clattering across the ground toward Chiun, who stood quietly watching.
Remo slowly regained his feet "Sorry, Willie, you just lost the ball on downs."
And then Remo moved toward him with a leap.
"This one's for the Gipper," Remo said.
Butler rammed a forearm toward the bridge of Remo's nose but the arm struck only air and then Willie Butler felt a biting pain in his chest that turned to fire and the fire was flashing red and pure and it burned worse than all the fires he'd ever seen and in that last flash of flame, he thought back, and his mind said, it's me, Sis, it's Billie, I really can run fast because I know it, and someday I'm gonna be a big man and his sister was saying no tomming swamp nigger ever gonna amount to anything, but Sis, you were wrong, I was wrong, hate and violence isn't the way, it just doesn't work, but his sister didn't answer and suddenly Willie Butler didn't care anymore because he was dead.
Remo stood up and rolled Butler over with his foot so his face was buried in the dust
"That's the biz, sweetheart," he said.
The Loni were still silently watching. Chiun moved toward Remo, put his hand on Remo's arm and said loudly: "Two parts of the legend are now completed."
He looked slowly around the circle of Loni, confused and staring, then at Obode who had regained his dignity and stood erect, his arms yanked high up over his head, determined to die like a British soldier.
"The evil in the world is not always Hausa evil," Chiun said. "The Loni curse has not been the Hausa, but the Loni people who have no heart. We must give you back your heart."
Chiun released Remo's arm and turned toward the fire pit. Almost as if by signal, the last of the water evaporated, and the pit went aflame with a searing whoosh that seemed to swallow the oxygen in the arena and that moved Obode back, cringing slightly.
From a bowl alongside the pit, Chiun took salt and began sprinkling it at the end of the pit, seemingly oblivious to the heat. While Chiun's ritual went on, Saffah and her two sisters moved forward behind Chiun.
The flames died quickly as the dried-out wood almost exploded into fire and Chiun motioned to the two Loni men who stood near the rear corners of the pit. Using long staves, they began to spread the fire, shaking the twigs and embers loose, and exposing through the fire the giant ostrich egg-sized rocks, now glistening white hot from their two-day baking.
Remo came up alongside Chiun.